Physical Assaults: Lateral Violence Among Nurses Research

Lateral Violence among Nurses
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Evidence-Based Violence takes place in workplaces on a daily basis. In healthcare, such problems persist and interfere with nurses’ practice. Violent cases are experienced in various forms of physical assaults, abuse, lateral violence, bullying, and sexual harassment among others. A review of available literature points to increasing cases of lateral violence in healthcare facilities. Lateral violence negatively impacts the working environment and also the nurse's ability to deliver optimal healthcare. The following paragraphs detail the prevalence of lateral violence, its characteristics, risks factors, potential intervention and control mechanisms as well provide a critique to the available data on lateral violence.
Griffin (as cited in Roberts, 2015) defines lateral violence (LV) as a situation where the nurses covertly or overtly direct their dissatisfaction inward towards each other and those less powerful than themselves. Lateral violence is significantly experienced in the nursing profession; up to 93% of nurses have experienced lateral violence at some point as noted by Jacob and Kyzer (2010). Other studies found that 40% of the samples nurses had contemplated leaving their jobs while 90% had difficulty confronting the perpetrator, whereas 85% had either experienced it or seen it first-hand (Roberts, 2015). It leads to absenteeism, affects team dynamics team performance and patient safety. Budin, Brewer, Chao &Kovner (2013) found that new nursing graduates are the most at risk and highly susceptible to lateral violence.
Lateral violence manifests itself through physical, verbal and emotional forms. It takes place as forms of abuse by one nurse against the other. It manifests in both oral and no verbal behaviors like; frowning or another nonverbal innuendo which may degrade the ability or authority of a fellow nurse, making rude or demeaning comments, raising eyebrows and making faces as well acting in ways that undermine the capacity to help others are examples of lateral violence. It also includes infighting, sabotaging through hoarding, scapegoating, passive and aggressive communication as well as failure to respect privacy and breaking confidences. Coursey et.al. (2013) note that the behavior is deliberate and can open or masked as is always in most cases.
A lot of risk factors are associated with lateral violence. Lateral violence directly affects nurse’s productivity and turnover. One of the major problems at a time of nursing shortage is the inability of organizations to keep top quality nurses due to lateral violence. Lateral violence affects nurses in both personal and professional level. In a profession that has long been considered a calling, the effects of lateral violence have caused nurses to feel disenchanted and frustrated to the extent of abandoning their career, or experiencing chronic burnout. Increased absenteeism, high job-related stress, less job satisfaction are some of the risk factors of lateral violence which may turn manifests in substandard care for the patients (Stanton, 2015).
Nurses have reported both psychological and physical maladies as a result of lateral violence. Ga...